Abstract
Summary
Papillary muscles of the cat subjected to various resting tensions exhibited morphologic changes, the severity of which could be correlated with degree of loading with loads of 3 g or greater. These changes were similar to those which occur post mortem in cardiac muscle and appeared whether the muscle was stimulated to contract or subjected to static tension. Morphologic alterations appeared in both isotonic and isometric preparations but appeared more severe in isotonic preparations. Rate and degree of failure of isotonically contracting muscles could be correlated with size of the resting load but such a correlation was not observed with muscles contracting under isometric conditions.
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